1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a system for handling a fault or failure condition detected in the operation of a software or hardware provided in an information processing system, in which the system detects a fault or failure condition, records the information of a detected fault or failure condition, and performs fault handling processing in order to recover from the detected fault or failure condition. More particularly, the present invention relates to a fault handling system and a fault handling method in which the operation or type of fault handling processing can be changed adaptively according to the operating status of the information processing system.
2. Description of the Related Art
A conventional example of the fault handling system for information processing system may be disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. Hei 10-171683. FIG. 17 of the accompanying drawings shows a block diagram of the conventional example of the fault handling system to be applied to an information processing system.
Referring to FIG. 17, an information processing system 1 includes a fault detection circuit 11 and a fault detail recording circuit 12 for fault handling processing. Upon detection of a fault by the fault detection circuit 11, the fault detail recording circuit 12 selects one of a plurality of external storage devices 2-1 through 2-n by referring to a management table 13, an initial failure information recorded flag 14 and a selection pointer 15, and records the information of the detected fault.
The conventional fault handling system for information processing system discussed above poses a problem of failing to change a method or type of recording fault handling processing or fault recovery processing adaptively according to a type of fault. Furthermore, various types of faults may occur in various operating conditions or phases of the information processing system, such as a system development operation phase, a test verification operation phase, a maintenance operation phase, or a substantial operation phase. Consequently, different types of fault information recording processing are fault recovery processing are to be required for different types of faults occurred at different operating phases of the information processing system. Further, in this respect, the conventional fault handling system has a problem of failing to change the types of the fault handling processing adaptively according to the operating phase or status of the information processing system. It is required to analyze a fault by recording the information of the fault in the test verification operation phase, even if the fault is only a minor one, and by stopping the operation of the information processing system when detecting the fault occurred, for example. On the other hand, once the information processing system started an operation, it is not required to report any fault other than a critical fault which may cause a negative effect to the operation of the information processing system for the purpose of improving the maintainability of the system operation. For that reason, it is also required in that stage to operate the fault recovery processing in such a manner as not to interrupt the continuity of the system operation as much as possible.
Another problem with the conventional fault handling system for information processing system is that the fault handling processing is not allowed to be changed adaptively according to the system configuration of the information processing system. For example, the information processing system may be connected with a console or may be included in a duplex system. In those cases, it is desirable or needed to change the type of the fault handling processing adaptively according to the system configuration.